Clarkson University Doctoral Candidate Jiajia Pan Receives Scholarship for River Modeling Research

2015 Jul 1

Clarkson University doctoral candidate Jiajia Pan of Wuhan, China, a civil and environmental engineering major, has received a scholarship from the New York Section American Water Works Association for his research on water resources engineering.

Pan has received the Russel L. Sutphen Scholarship of $1,500, sponsored by the consulting firm O'Brien & Gere, for his work on a computer model on river dynamics. He has been working with his advisor, Distinguished Research Professor in Hydraulic Engineering Hung Tao Shen, to develop an all-season river model.

"We are developing a model that can study the river morphology with the effect of the flow, sediment, and the ice and thermal regime," Shen said. "We are developing models including these phenomena to study the impacts of flow and weather conditions on river morphology, ecology and water quality through all seasons."

Shen has worked on this river model system with a series of graduate students, and the system has been applied to rivers in different regions around the world. His goal is to continue expanding the model to help engineers on operations of hydropower and other water resource projects.

Pan spent the spring semester at the Nanyang Environment and Water Research Institute in Singapore to further study how temperature affects river dynamics. He said he is grateful the NYSAWWA is supporting his research on water resources engineering.

"It's a great honor for me to get this scholarship," Pan said. "It helps me to travel to attend international conferences."

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